|
Remembering a Forgotten Covenant
Hywel R. Jones
Originally Published in
The Banner of Truth magazine, Issue 429, June 1999
Covenant is a most important term for understanding and
appreciating the message of the Bible in all its parts. Most of
its uses are in the Old Testament, but it appears also in the
New, referring not only to that earlier body of literature, but
also to the new order which came with the coming of the Messiah,
his life, death and resurrection.In the ancient Near East, a
covenant was a common way of making a binding, structured
relationship between two parties. It expressed the commitment of
each to the other in the light of specified terms, and it was
often solemnly ratified by means of a sacrifice or an oath, or
both. The covenants between Abraham and Abimelech, and David and
Jonathan are examples of this (see Gen. 21:27 and I Sam. 18:3).
God also condescended to use this procedure, and he made
covenants with people, laying down stipulations and promising
blessings. Some see this pattern in God's self-revelation to
Adam (and his descendants) before the Fall. Whether or not that
is so, there can be no doubt that God made a covenant with Noah
(Genesis 6:18), with Abram (Gen. 15:18) with David (Psalm 89:3),
with all Israel at Sinai (Exodus 19:5) and with all who from
‘every kindred, tribe, tongue and nation' believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ (Luke 22:20). In the study of the Old Testament
in the last half-century, an increasing amount of attention has
been paid to covenants. But one covenant has not been
highlighted. It is ‘the covenant with Levi’, to which the
prophet Malachi twice refers (2:4,8). Why should that be so?
Three possible reasons could account for this.
i) The Old Testament nowhere contains an account of this
covenant actually being made. Instead, what we have are
indications that one did exist (see Deut. 33:8-10, Neh. 13:29
and Jer. 33: 20-21). ii) To judge from the references just
given, the most probable occasions when this covenant with Levi
was made were the Golden Calf and the Baal-Peor incidents
recorded in Exodus 32 and Numbers 25. However, both of those are
connected with the Sinaitic covenant which is so prominent in
the Old Testament, not to mention the New.
iii) There is some uncertainty as to who Malachi meant by
‘Levi’. As he does not mention the distinction which is made
elsewhere in the Old Testament between the priests and the
Levites, what he says about 'the covenant with Levi' leaves room
for uncertainty as to whom he actually had in mind. Was it the
tribe of Levi as a whole, or Aaron and his descendants, or
merely one of them, namely Phinehas? A further complication is
that Malachi directs to the priests as a whole part of what God
had said to Phinehas, recorded in Numbers 25:12. While
granting that the ‘covenant with Levi’ has not been entirely by
-passed but regarded as part of the Sinaitic covenant, the fact
that Malachi makes much of it should count for something,
because his ministry reviews the Old Testament and anticipates
the New. Why did he isolate it for consideration? What did he
have to say about it, and what might it have to say to us today?
These matters are well worth investigating, and that is what we
seek to do.
The Covenant with Levi
We have referred to the events recorded in Exodus 32 and Numbers
25 in connection with this covenant. The first occurred at the
foot of Sinai soon after the deliverance from Egypt, and the
other in the plains of Moab, just as Israel was about to enter
into the Promised Land. While Exodus 32 is, in our view, more
suitable as the occasion, when the covenant was made because it
involved the whole tribe of Levi, it is most important to note
that both passages record a rebellion against God which
manifested itself in idolatry and immorality. The first was
associated with the episode of the Golden Calf and the other
with the Baal of Peor. The covenant with Levi was therefore an
engagement made by the Lord in desperate circumstances. On each
occasion, the Sinaitic covenant which had constituted the tribes
of Israel as the people of God was being under-mined and openly
flouted by the defection of the priests. Consequently, the
transfer to Levi of the responsibility to teach and apply
covenant law was intended not only to reform the people but also
to preserve the theocracy. Malachi saw this declension in the
wilderness after deliverance from Egypt as repeating itself
among those who had returned from exile in Babylon. He therefore
spoke of how the covenant with Levi had been violated (2:8). But
the history of God’s redemptive purpose was continuing, and so
he predicted that God would validate the covenant once more
(2:4). This is all very relevant to what has happened to the
church and its ministry of late, and is happening in our own
day.
Violating the Covenant with Levi
‘Like people, like priest’ is one of the several Bible
expressions which have passed into common parlance. It was used
by Hosea (4:9) to describe a state of affairs among the people
of God which was the opposite of what should have been the case.
The priests had been appointed to offer sacrifice, reach the
law, and generally uphold the difference between holy and
profane, clean and unclean (Lev. 10:10). It was therefore vital
that they should be different from the people. ‘Like people,
like priest’ was the epitome of a terrible decline in the whole
community, and it meant a serious threat to the continuance of
the covenant. Malachi charges the priests with having
‘corrupted the covenant of Levi’ (2:8). He shows that they had
encouraged gross effrontery to God in the matter of sacrificial
worship (1:6-2:3) and had undermined the authority and
impartiality of covenant law (2:8-9). Had they been faithful to
their sacred duty, God's blessing of life and peace would have
resulted for the people. As in the days of king Asa, Israel was
‘without a teaching priest and without law’ and so in her life
was ‘without the true God’ (2 Chron. 15:3). A striking
parallel to all this is found in the church of the western
world. Over the last two hundred years the truth has been
progressively dismantled by those whose duty it was and is to
maintain it, come what may. The Bible has been reduced to a book
like any other, containing some important facts and useful
insights, but no longer the inspired and inerrant word of God.
Just as the absoluteness of revealed truth is now nonsense, so
the transcendence of a triune Godhead is now an unnecessary
notion. God is only immanent, personally present in every one
and in every thing, and in any and every object of worship. Far
from being immutable, he is in process of becoming more like
what ‘a god like us’ ought to be, just as we are to become more
like what human beings ought to be. Jesus shows us how to do
that by his awareness of and dependence upon God, which we are
to copy. There is no need for regeneration and no need for
atonement. Justification is a fiction and sanctification is
moral improvement. Salvation is by means of works. Morality is
living in love and not conforming to righteous demands.
Fornication, adultery, and divorce are justified along with
same-sex unions. Life, the life of the unborn and the terminally
ill, is cheap. Partial--birth abortions are justified in terms
of a woman's rights over her own body, and an assisted death by
the name of human dignity. This is the only life that exists.
There is no hell to shun, not even by the impenitent, and no
heaven to strive for. The emphasis in the church is on the
visual, not the verbal; the earthly, not the heavenly; the
physical or the psychological, not the spiritual; on man, not
God. All this has been urged in terms of making Christianity
easier to accept by the man in the street, the factory, or the
university. In that respect it has failed most manifestly and
miserably. All it has succeeded in doing is emptying churches,
making Christianity an object of public ridicule and causing
offence to God. Liberalism has been the high road to uselessness
and irrelevance. ‘Like a trampled spring and a polluted well, so
is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked’ (Prov.
25:26). A line should have been drawn in the sand; instead,
territory has been conceded to the world, time and time again.
‘Who is on the Lord's side?’ (Exod.32: 26) is an urgent question
for today. Validating the Covenant with Levi
Malachi is a figure of major importance in the Old Testament in
relation to the covenant. Just as Samuel related to Moses by
maintaining the covenant which he had inaugurated when it was
under threat, so Malachi related to Ezra, who had re-established
the covenant after the return from exile in Babylon (Neh. 8:7).
Malachi ministered between the two visits of Nehemiah to
Jerusalem, at a time when the movement for reform seemed to
stand still and there was even a danger of reverting to the sins
which had caused the Exile. Having lamented the demise of the
teaching priest, he took on his mantle, reviewing the past and
evaluating his own times in the light of God's covenant demands.
But he was also given to predict (see 2:4) that God would
validate the covenant with Levi which men had violated. He
described its ministry in these words: ‘The law of truth was in
his mouth and injustice was not found on his lips. He walked
with me in peace and equity and turned many from iniquity.’
Malachi saw the true Levite as one who spoke for God, walked
with God and turned many to God and, in measure, he discharged
that role himself. Those three aspects are rich seams of
biblical teaching. The apostle John wrote about the truth,
walking in truth and laboring for or with the truth (2 John 1-2;
3 John :8). But it was not Nehemiah's return to Jerusalem that
Malachi was looking for as a validation of the covenant, or even
for a prophet like Elijah (4:5). He was looking for the coming
of the greatest Levite, the messenger of the covenant (3:1) who
would bring into existence purged and consecrated Levites, that
is, gospel preachers (3:2). The magnificent words which
Malachi used therefore describe the Lord Jesus Christ and his
servants who proclaim the truth of God. They are, perhaps, the
most wonderful description in the Bible of the preacher of God's
good news, even though they are found in the Old Testament. John
Bunyan seemed to think so. In Interpreter's house, Christian was
shown a portrait of a serious man who ‘had eyes lifted up to
heaven, the best of books in his hand, the law of truth was
written upon his lips, the world was behind his back. [He] stood
as if he pleaded with men and a crown of gold did hang over his
head.’ Why did God validate in the fifth century BC what men
had violated? Surely it was because the Messiah was to come, the
first Christian millennium to dawn. Even with the visible church
in appalling decline at that time, the Messiah had been
announced and he himself had promised to come. And he did! The
coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, as God's faithful witness to
the Jews, was proof that the covenant with Levi had been
validated. Equally, the raising up of a long line of preachers
of that same truth in the two millennia of the church’s history,
and often against the background of the church's apostasy and
the defection of her ministry, prove the same thing. This is the
story of the last two hundred years or so, and there are men who
uphold truth in a day of apostasy, ignorance and paganism. The
covenant with Levi has not been destroyed. May we not therefore
hope in God that the messenger of the covenant will come to his
temple again? That was the assurance that the martyr Thomas
(Little) Bilney was given in answer to his prayer that God would
come to the assistance of the church. He rose from prayer with
the exclamation: “A new time is beginning. The Christian
assembly is about to be renewed… Someone is coming unto us, I
see him, I hear him – it is Jesus Christ ... He is the king, and
it is He who will call the true ministers commissioned to
evangelize His people.”
|
|
S. M. Baugh
R. Scott Clark
Iain M. Duguid
Bryan D. Estelle
W. Robert Godfrey
Michael S. Horton
Dennis E. Johnson
Hywel R. Jones
Peter R. Jones
Joel E. Kim
Julius J. Kim
George C. Scipione
Robert B. Strimple
David M. VanDrunen
|
EMAIL TO A FRIEND
PRINT
SHARE
